HESEB The Helmholtz state of the art Soft X Ray Undulator beamline at SESAME

SESAME and a consortium of five Helmholtz Centers are designing and installing a state of the art soft X Ray undulator beamline at the SESAME light source in Amman, Jordan. Funding is provided by the Helmholtz Association over a four year project cycle that started in January 2019. This is an interim report covering the first 36 months of the project where the construction and installation has been almost completed and commissioning and characterization of the beamline is about to start. Additionally, seminars, workshops, and a training program are part of the project aimed at establishing a broad user communit

Increased ventral premotor cortex recruitment after arm training in an fMRI study with subacute stroke patients

To investigate therapy associated changes in the cerebral representation of movement after stroke, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during an active and a passive motor task for the affected and unaffected hand before and after a three week comprehensive hand motor training

Prolonged motor skill learning - a combined behavioural training and theta burst TMS study

Purpose: To assess the behavioural effects of prolonged motor practice in healthy volunteers, and the specific impact of inhibiting different motor-related brain regions in the late phase of motor learning using continuous theta burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (cTBS). Methods: Twelve subjects trained their non-dominant arm in eight arm motor tasks (Arm Ability Training, AAT) once a day for three weeks (16 sessions). During the last four days, training was performed before and after applying cTBS to either M1, S1, SMA, or PMC. Results: The AAT induced substantial and robust motor learning for the trained arm with variations across tasks. Considerable motor learning was also observed in the non-trained dominant arm with remarkably similar variations across tasks, suggesting that practise improved common underlying sensorimotor capacities (abilities) in addition to effector-specific effects. When applied after prolonged training, inhibitory cTBS showed no detrimental effects on motor performance/learning; M1 cTBS even improved performance in a labyrinth task. Conclusions: Prolonged training with the non-dominant arm led to profound motor learning across abilities with transfer to the non-trained dominant arm. Unlike during early stages of motor learning, no detrimental effect of cTBS over M1, S1, PMC, or SMA could be substantiated after prolonged motor practice